A Machine Type Communication (MTC) User Equipment (UE or terminal) is also referred to as Machine to Machine (M2M) user communication equipment. And the MTC UE is a main application form of the current internet of things.
Recently, as a spectral efficiency of a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) or Long-Term Evolution Advance (LTE-Advance or LTE-A) system is high, more and more mobile operators select LTE or LTE-A as an evolution direction of a broadband wireless communication system. LTE/LTE-A-based multiple types of MTC data services will be more attractive.
The MTC UE is usually a low-cost device, characterized by small supported Radio Frequency (RF) bandwidths, single receiving antennae and the like, RF sending and receiving bandwidths being 1.4 MHz generally. Under the condition that a system bandwidth is greater than 1.4 MHz, it is necessary to allocate multiple downlink or uplink working narrowbands to the MTC UE, so that the MTC UE can receive or send a signal on these narrowbands. And narrowbands are allocated to the MTC UE, and overheads of indicating resource allocations can be further reduced.
In the LTE system, resource allocation modes ‘type 0’ and ‘type 1’ are based on downlink data allocation. And several successive Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) constitute a Resource Block Group (RBG). A size of the RBG is associated with the system bandwidth, and the size of the RBG is one kind of 1, 2, 3 and 4. In a resource allocation mode ‘type 0’, a resource allocation granularity is the RBG.
In the LTE system, a cell will broadcast a cell-specific parameter namely a Sounding Reference Signal (SRS) bandwidth, which is a maximum SRS bandwidth of the cell and is hereinafter referred to as an SRS bandwidth of the cell. The UE in the cell sends an SRS in the SRS bandwidth of the cell. The SRS sending bandwidth of the UE is not greater than the SRS bandwidth of the cell, and the SRS sending bandwidth of the UE is hereinafter referred to as an SRS bandwidth of the UE. The SRS bandwidth of the cell is an integral multiple of four PRBs, and consists of a plurality of SRS bandwidths having four PRBs. The SRS bandwidth of each UE occupying at least one successive SRS bandwidths has four PRBs. In addition to the SRS bandwidth of the UE, an evolved Node B (eNB) will configure other SRS sending parameters for the UE, which include: a starting frequency domain position, combing teeth, a sending period and an offset, so the UE can periodically or non-periodically send an SRS. The eNB obtains a channel situation of the UE by measuring the SRS. During scheduling of UE transmission, the UE is scheduled to an appropriate frequency domain position for data transmission according to the obtained channel situation of the UE so as to obtain a scheduling gain. The SRS bandwidth of the UE is an integral multiple of four PRBs, and the MTC UE supports SRS bandwidths having four PRBs at most.
In some situations, a solution involved in a narrowband allocation mode has not been provided yet.